Marginal Christianity

Paying attention to God is the heart of Christian existence. Duh! Sounds like every Christian platitude, right? I hope by this point you can see that’s not true. Or at least not simple and easy. To counsel someone to undertake paying attention to God is actually to invite them on a harrowing journey into a reality we never imagined. Attention is not simply noticing something but attending to it, engaging with it, and entering into a mutually reciprocal relation with it. When that “it” is God the reality we encounter is personal to the nth degree and full of grace and truth like nothing else we know. We will not remain unscathed in this journey but the wounds we sustain are divine surgery for our healing. An early age in the West faced a world filled with gods and spiritual powers and faced the challenge of discern the right god and powers to attend to.   Later as Western culture changed and entered the modern age the challenge was to sustain faith in the face of on...

God is love. Love is . . . -committed to us. We’re stuck with God for good or ill, like it or not. -working for us. God wills and works for our good. God will make us like Christ no matter the cost (to us or to him). -always seeking to save us (and we always need to be saved). We’re loster than we can imagine, God is more resourceful than we’ll ever know. There’s little God won’t do, other than not be himself, to save us. This may seem to put a dent in his reputation, vex and perplex us, raise all kinds of doubts, even at times drive us away from him (really or ideas of him) so we might truly find him and be saved. -tough as nails (like the ones that bound his Son to the cross) on us and our world as needed. -accepting us, actually sitting next to us on any trash heap we end up on, like Job’s friends sans the lousy theology. -challenging us to be as good as we were made to be. -unfathomable as chess’s Grandest Master playing all of us at the same time and somehow allow...

April 24, 2018 ·  Fr. Stephen Freeman   I stumbled into the Tolkien novels as a teenager (in the 60’s). They were a gift from an Aunt and so collected dust on a shelf for a year or more. A virus turned me into a shut-in for a short season, and I dusted them off out of sheer boredom. I extended my illness for a couple of weeks until the whole series was finished. It was a journey into another world, one that had a way of changing the world I lived in. There were no elves that suddenly appeared nor was there an army of orcs invading my town. But there was an ache that I felt as I read that seemed to match an ache in my life. It took some years to discover the connection. People have told stories from the earliest days of our existence. We do not have the words of the earliest stories, but we have seen their illustrations, recorded on the walls of caves. No one knows what how the stories went, but they seem to involved animals. The beauty of those animals tells us that ...

Mark 9:14-31 Four scenes comprise this section: 9:14-19/9:20-24/9:25-27/9:28-29 9:14-19 Jesus and James, John, and Peter come down the mountain to demon-possession and debate with the scribes. Their arrival moves “the whole crowd” to “awe” (v.15). Why? Mark doesn’t say specifically. But this “awe” creates an expectation that Jesus’ presence will transform the situation for the kingdom of God. Jesus wades into the fray. A father has brought his possessed son, driven by a spirit that renders him mute, physically harms him, paralyzes him, and causes him to foam at the mouth and grind his teeth (v.18). The description leads us to believe that this is the most difficult exorcism he has faced thus far. Maybe that’s why the disciples, who previously had effectively exorcised demons (6:13), failed here. And their failure is symptomatic of the nation’s failure (v.19). The great crisis of Israel’s existence and Jesus’ life loom right ahead and he feels the pressure of this acutel...

8. What is Faith? Through the cross of Jesus Paul finds a new divine transcendence emerging from this negation. Faith is a transcendent experience born out of this negation. “Faith for Paul is something ever strange to our modern ears. Faith is actually to enter into Christ; it is to have our own being taken into the being of Jesus.” (2901) We are tied to Jesus’ faithfulness, his ministry. “’Faith’ then, for us, ‘is a complex human experience, and Paul preserves this complexity while giving it a unique twist. While affirming its character as trust and conviction, Paul connects faith to the experience of Jesus as God’s faithful Son. Faith is more than trust; it is also fidelity, or loyalty.’” (2920) Dreaming of Phinehas Phinheas is Saul’s model of righteousness. Only he and Abraham are called righteous in the Old Testament. “He was a young man with a robust, consequential, vital faith—with a personal religious commitment brimming with adjectives. He saw the Israelites...

The Great Judgment (20:11-15) The Great Judgment Images of power introduce this scene. A “great white throne,” an undescribed but imperious “one” sits on it. Creation felling in terror but finding no place to hide. Even more terrifying, the dead are all over the place. Famous infamous, unknown, uncared about, they’re all there. From the sea and Death and Hades the dead come. Before the throne they watch as “books” are opened, full of the deeds of the deed (20:13). Death and Hades join the two beasts in the lake of fire. The sea too, after disgorging its dead disappears and has no place in the new creation. The dragon is already caged in the abyss. The powers that oppose God are defeated. Human beings still face a reckoning before God based on what they have done (20:13). And those who have not done enough to get their name written in the “book of life” join the evil powers in the lake of fire, “the second death 20:14). The first death, of course, is our physical dea...

Our culture is often likened to whitewater rapids - ever-changing, unpredictable, dangerous. There are some rules for rafting these whitewater rapids, though, that might give us some guidelines for navigating these cultural rapids. I've translated them into biblical guidelines for a "whitewater faith" for navigating such times. 1. Rest during the calms because there is more turbulence coming/"Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy" 2. When a rock looms ahead, lean into it not away from it/"Take up your cross and follow me" 3. Whatever else you do, never stop paddling/"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you" 4. Let everything else but your life jacket go if you fall into the water/"There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved" (in the sense that whoever find...

By  Wes Granberg-Michaelson  02-03-201 Sen. Mark Hatfield Ever since President Dwight Eisenhower's administration, each president has attended the annual National Prayer Breakfast, drawing about 3,500 invited guests including members of Congress and government officials. There are readings, prayers, a main speaker, and remarks by the president. In 1973, as the nation was exiting the agony of the Vietnam War, and President Richard Nixon was just re-elected by a landslide — before Watergate unfolded — Sen. Mark O. Hatfield was invited to give some remarks. I served on his staff at the time. We consulted about what to say with Jim Wallis, a new friend in Chicago, publishing a small, upstart magazine called  The Post-American . After a lot of thought and prayer, Mark Hatfield rose to the podium, with President Nixon on his right and Billy Graham on his left, and delivered these words: My brothers and sisters: As we gather at this prayer breakfast let us bew...

Written by David Fitch on January 12, 2016 It’s always dangerous to comment (or make judgments) on conflicts internal to a particular community. You don’t have inside information. You have no access to the relational dynamics internal to the matter. So much of what is going on has little or nothing to do with what is actually being said publically. This is why I prefer to not speak as an outsider on who’s wrong or right in the Wheaton College conflict over the suspension and potential firing of Prof. Larycia Hawkins. Instead I’d like to comment on two specific parts of the controversy: the wearing of a hijab by a Christian, and the statement “Christians and Muslims worship the same God” which professor Hawkins declared on FB. And then I’d like to make a general recommendation to Wheaton as an alumnus of that esteemed institution. On wearing a hijab, I believe this reflects a posture of being “with” those among us who are under duress, even persecution, for their beliefs an...

          Our relationship to God occurs in at least three grammatical moods. First, is the indicative mood. Faith in this mood is declarative, stating what is true, usually with a fairly high degree of certainty. Fundamentalists of all stripes (right, left, center) can be found here. Intellectual assent is the key virtue in this mood.           Secondly, we have the imperative mood. Here demand is the main thing. The rules are there and they must be kept. Purity cultures (again, of all stripes) thrive on this imperative mood. Taboo subjects like sex are high profile here. Performance is the key.           Thirdly, we have the subjunctive mood. Here we find the “perhaps, maybes, hopes, doubts, perplexities” of faith. This is the mood we all live in much of the time if we’re honest. The rough edges and loose ends of life are where this mood th...

October 6, 2015 by Andrew Stephens-Rennie Do you ever have those days? Days where Jesus is right beside you? And do you know those other days, those panic-stricken days it seems he’s up and left, you can’t remember if he’s ever been there, and you don’t know where to look, let alone whether you will find him? I began those reflections in a previous post . And maybe it’s just a season, but these days the latter are more prevalent than the former. And I just don’t know why. I could write for days and days about Jesus. I could write for days about the faith and the tradition of which I’m apart. I could write for aeons about the things I’ve been reading about him, how they’ve impacted me, how they’ve changed my worldview, my way of walking in this world. But these days I don’t feel as though I have a prayer of recovering the sense of Jesus’ imminent presence in my life. Read more at http://www.empireremixed.com/2015/10/06/return-to-the-table/

by Andrew Perriman | Sep 19, 2015 | Hermeneutics , Theology | 0 Comments People who take the trouble to think of themselves as “Protestant”—as heirs of the Reformation—are likely to be of the view that the doctrine of justification by faith sits right at the heart of their religious identity. But what sort of thing is “justification by faith”? What does it look like? What does it do? In an interview on the Gospel Coalition website Tom Schreiner provides a standard definition: Justification by faith alone means that we stand in the right before God by faith instead of on the basis of our works. In the classical Protestant formulation of the doctrine, justification doesn’t mean make righteous , but rather declare righteous …. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to us by faith so that our forgiveness of sins and righteousness are gifts of God. The doctrine explains how a person is saved. It has no real application outside of this basic existenti...

  June 15, 2015 by Peter Enns 0 Comments In 1965, the Byrds had a big hit with a song written by Pete Seeger and based on chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes: “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Everything on earth has its time and place—its “season,” as the writer (Qohelet) puts it.   There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time for war, and a time for peace, etc. The Byrds’s tune features great harmonies and gives off a feel-good-be-at-peace-with-the-world-Zen vibe. You know. The ‘60s. But these ancient words are anything but harmonious and peaceful. We are seeing a faith crisis happening right in front of us. Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/06/a-faith-crisis-in-the-bible-and-dont-let-some-60s-hippies-tell-you-otherwise/

  Via Shutterstock.com , with illustration by Jerod Clark Branson Parler 06/07/15 Even as people have been reflecting on the recent Pew research noting the diminishing numbers of American Christians, a recent National Geographic cover article bemoaned another sort of unbelief, claiming that “we live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge - from climate change to vaccinations - faces furious opposition.” How do we account for the way that the corrosive unbelief of our age is not just limited to matters of religion, but of science as well? Read more at http://thinkchristian.reframemedia.com/how-science-and-reason-created-an-age-of-unbelief-in-science-and-reason  

Posted on 10 December 2014 by Fr Aidan Kimel Early last month Peter Enns published an article titled “ Experience Teaches Us to be Radically Undogmatic .” My immediate thought when I read the title: “How very dogmatic of Dr Enns.” I then proceeded to read the article, which, as it turns out, consists of a lengthy quotation from the great German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. I have never read Gadamer, but I certainly have read hermeneutical reflections that have been dependent on him; and I find myself more than a little sympathetic with the citation. It reminded me of T. S. Eliot’s critique of tradition and the falsification of experience in his poem “East Coker”: Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God. The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. The Gadame...

In this country we live in a Christian culture well-described by the late Dallas Willard as promoting a gospel of “sin-management.”   Perhaps it’s because it was birthed in frontier revivalism with its dualism of body and soul.   The latter was the important thing about us and hence, “soul-saving” (getting people into heaven) was the overriding (only?) task of the Christian.   The barrier to this was “sin.”   Therefore we became sin-obsessed.   We saw ourselves as forgiven sinners (which we are – thank God!). This was Billy Graham’s burden in his evangelistic crusades and, in a different key, it was the message of philosophical theologian Paul Tillich is his famous essay “You are Accepted” in his book Shaking the Foundations.   After quoting Paul’s claim that where sin abounds grace superabounds (Rom.5:20), Tillich writes:   “These words of Paul summarize his apostolic experience, his religious message as a whole, and the Christian standing of l...

5 Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. 3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.   Are we saved by our faith?   This is a frequent question in some circles at least.   A careful reading of Romans 5:2 spells out Paul’s understanding.   Faith grants us “access,” but access to what?   Into “this grace” (read salvation).   And how did we arrive in “this grace”?   “Through him,” this in Jesus Christ. Or to put it backwards:   Jesus Christ has achieved salvation for all human...